Monday, November 30, 2009

I wish I was relaxing by the lake, but instead I'm busy wrangling dogs and trying to get some work done. If, unlike me, you have a little time to squander, I encourage you spend it with the erotic poetry of Kenneth Rexroth.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

If I had to name my least favorite mass market scent, I'd probably say ET White Diamonds. There are plenty of other perfumes that can claim huge and inexplicable popularity, but White Diamonds has a ferocious sillage that puts it a cut above the rest. There's no escaping its dense, distinctive fog, so suggestive of a wedding bouquet fried in chicken fat. To be fair, I don't think it was always as bad as it is now. In its early years (the 90s), I found it mediocre but inoffensive. I own a mini of it from those days, and the scent of that juice seems mellower than the aroma today's wearers leave in their wake. Maybe the formula has changed, or maybe I'm just indulging in the reflexive nostalgia that afflicts most perfumistas. In any case, I always hold my breath a little whenever I get stuck near a White Diamonds dowager, and make a mental note to go easy on my own obnoxious favorites (Miss Balmain, Fracas, etc.) so as not to perpetuate the cycle of suffering.

Last Friday, I was in the supermarket around 2 in the afternoon, and the store was crowded with old folks. (Strange, that, since senior discount day is Wednesday. Maybe they were giving the oldsters an early chance to shop safely, since this is Thanksgiving week, when no sane person enters a supermarket without pepper spray and a firearm.) I was scanning the shelves for club soda when the first cloud of White Diamonds engulfed me. I looked up to see a lady in a wheelchair cruising toward me, pushed along by her hired attendant. Her white hair was carefully curled. Her lips and nails were bright pink, as was her velour tracksuit. I grabbed my club soda and moved on to the cleaning aisle, where I found the sweet fragrance of Comet and Fabuloso competing with the scent of a superannuated redhead toddling along after her middle-aged daughter. She was wearing polyester slacks, a pearl-buttoned sweater, Easy Spirits and meticulous make-up along with her White Diamonds.

I had an impulse to flee from her, too, but instead I stayed put for a moment and watched her out of the corner of my eye. She was a bit feeble and her daughter was being grumpy with her, but you could tell she was a woman who still took a lot of pleasure in living. She put thought and effort into how she presented herself, which takes some courage in a culture that despises old people and would like to erase them from view. Her perfume made her defiantly, undeniably present to everyone she encountered; perhaps not exactly as she imagined it did, but then, what do any of us know about how the world perceives us?

Good for her, I thought, and all her aromatic sisters. They should keep spritzing White Diamonds as long as they have strength to work the nozzle. They should make the family give 'em gift sets for Christmas so they can layer the stuff. May they hang onto pleasure until their last days, and never surrender the juice until it's pried out of their cold, dead hands.

Creamy melted chocolate, grainy marzipan, a fleshy petal flecked with dew--those are just a few of the images that come to mind when sniffing StarFlower. You’ll notice all of them are rich with texture, as well as taste and smell. There’s a wonderful tangible quality to StarFlower that sets it apart from the typical sticky-sweet gourmand. Don’t get me wrong—it is sweet, and as luscious as the chocolate cherry cordials I used to gorge on when I was a child, but there’s a roughness present in the scent. Every whiff of StarFlower tickles the back of my throat with the irresistibly abrasive softness of crushed velvet.

The notes on Anya’s site tell the straight story: bitter almond, cherry, lemon, tuberose, chocolate, vanilla, and "animalic playfulness." What you read is what you get. (That final element is a cuddly critter, entirely skank-free.) On my skin, at least, StarFlower harbors no surprises. The almond at the top is gloriously potent, but the slow-arriving tuberose is quite tame. The chocolate note is actually present from the opening, but it gradually ascends to dominance as the flowers fade away. Happily, it lingers for hours without ever becoming stale. The thing I dislike about many gourmands is that the candy-coated base notes eventually begin to remind me of the smell that rises off the floor of a movie theater. No sign of that with StarFlower, which retains its freshness, probably thanks to the ghost of the tuberose.

In case it's not obvious, I am generally not the most ardent fan of sweetie-pie perfumes. Sharp green chypres and aldehydic florals are more my speed. My favorite scents from Anya's Garden are Fairchild and Pan, and their status is never going to be threatened by anything that reminds me of marzipan. But StarFlower is certainly one of the most interesting and beautiful olfactory confections I've ever encountered. Gourmand lovers should definitely check it out. I'm going to keep my sample handy, just for an occasional hit of its sweet charm.

Monday, November 16, 2009

My mother called this afternoon to tell me that her younger brother Hal has died. He had a massive heart attack and was gone before they could get him to a hospital. Hal was a bright spirit, always ready to laugh, and he loved to play practical jokes on my mom. They were very close all their lives, and it's so sad to know that she's lost him.

Hal, my mother, and their eldest brother Jimmy performed as a gospel trio when they were young, and they would usually sing whenever the family got together. I can't say I always enjoyed those impromptu performances, especially when I was a teenager, but the sound of their voices is a wonderful memory for me now. One song I remember them doing is "Suppertime," a country gospel standard. Its religious bathos made me cringe back in the day, and I guess it still does a little, but I understand the sentiment a lot better now than I did then.

This is a clip of Johnny Cash delivering the song about as well as anyone possibly could. I think Hal would enjoy it.

"Suppertime" was penned by Jimmie Davis, an interesting character you can read about here.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Weep you lovers, since Love is also weeping,and hear the reason that makes him full of tears.Amor feels ladies calling on Pity,revealing a bitter sorrow in their eyes,because the villain Death in gentle hearthas set his cruel machinations,destroying what the world has given praise toin gentle lady, all except honour.Hear how Amor has honoured her,who in his true form I saw lamentingbending above the lifeless image:and often gazing upwards to the heavens,where the gentle soul had already fled,that was a lady of such joyful semblance.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Aaron Copland was born on November 14, 1900. In recognition of the day, here's a wonderful montage of old film clips set to "The Promise of Living" from The Tender Land. If it doesn't make you misty with happiness, check yourself for a pulse.

Friday, November 13, 2009

If you're feeling bookish, there are some nice offerings at C16 this week. Michael Ray Taylor has a fun Q & A with Roy Blount, Jr., which you can check out here Paul McCoy talks with Barry Mazor about Meeting Jimmie Rodgershere. (Mazor's book, by the way, is excellent.) I've got a couple of new things up, too: A short Q & A with poet Natasha Trethewey here, and a review of a memoir by civil rights activist D'Army Bailey here. There's plenty more--go surf the site.

I've been obliged to neglect the blog a bit lately, but I'll be back soon with an update on the Little Dude and a review of Anya's StarFlower. Enjoy the weekend.

Monday, November 9, 2009

While idly cruising YouTube this afternoon, I discovered that there are scads of videos that present Plato's Cave accompanied by diverse visuals. Who knew? Apparently, we have The Matrix to thank for this. (Go here for a clip with discussion of the parallels.)

Some of the Cave videos are classier than the one below, but who can resist its awesome pairing of Orson Welles' voice with cheap animation? Not me.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Every year during the weeks leading up to Samhain, I deliberately turn my thoughts to the dead people I love. Some turn away my attentions, and some pause in their ethereal journey just long enough to say hello, but there’s usually one who parks himself in my mind, demanding that I draw forth every memory of his life. This year my maternal grandfather was the pushy one. He died when I was just six—a slow, awful death from a malignant brain tumor. Even though I was very young when he disappeared, I remember him vividly.

Granddaddy was a preacher, a deeply devout person, but he couldn’t have been less pious or dour. He was outrageous, irascible, and a lot of fun. Thinking about him now, I realize he must have been a very difficult man for my gentle grandmother to live with, but I was blind to that as a child. He doted on me and I adored him. When he took all the grandkids to Nashville’s shabby old amusement park, he’d make a point of sharing the seat with me on the roller coaster, teaching me how to enjoy the terror. Pleasurable fear was always a feature of encounters with my grandfather. He drove like a maniac, and I loved to stand on the back seat and lean over his shoulder as he tore up the streets. This was long before anyone imagined mandatory seatbelt laws, and car seats were unheard of. He’d probably wind up in jail these days, but it was pure joy for me.

A few times I spent the night at my grandparents’ house without my brothers. Those visits were a nice glimpse of what life might have been like as a pampered only child—lots of adult attention, abundant ice cream, and long hours of boredom with no playmates. There weren’t many toys in the house, and the bookshelves were full of preacherly tomes. There were a few picture books about Moses in the bulrushes, Jesus in the manger, etc., but I’d seen more than enough of that kind of stuff in Sunday school.

The one thing in my grandfather's library that fascinated me was a set of medical reference books. I couldn’t read the text, of course, but there were elaborate anatomy illustrations composed of layered transparencies, so that you could reveal progressively more intimate corners of the human body as you turned the pages. The colors were vivid, shocking to the eye, and so were the images: eyeball, colon, penis, breast--all depicted in slightly sickening detail.

Thoughts of those anatomy images have been the chief manifestation of my grandfather’s presence these past weeks. He has whispered in my ear a time or two, shown me his smiling face, reminded me of his love of banana splits and sorghum on biscuits; but mostly he has put those studies of the human organism in my mind. Wandering through the world, I have flashed on the realization that I am that complicated, strange assemblage in the medical books. I’ve looked at the people around me and watched them move, knowing that I am witnessing a miraculous, graceful coherence of blood, nerve, muscle and bone. I have had a fresh vision of the living, courtesy of the dead.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Madison Smartt Bell just published a novel about Nathan Bedford Forrest. I know the idea of plowing through a retelling of Forrest's exploits is not an appealing prospect for most BGN readers, but Devil's Dream is worth a look. If you are at all familiar with Bell's work, you know that he has a gift for capturing violent, morally suspect characters in his writer's net. His account of Forrest is part epic folk tale, part literary fugue, and full of blood-soaked poetry. Go here to read my interview with Bell about the book.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

I still haven't gotten around to finishing that post I mentioned yesterday, but here's something much better for your reading pleasure: "Childhood and Poetry" by Pablo Neruda. I had never seen it before David Dark posted a link to it this afternoon on FaceBook. I think it's delightful, a revelation. It's been reprinted often, so some of you have probably already seen it, but I think it deserves multiple readings. Enjoy.

Monday, November 2, 2009

I'm working on a longer post and don't have time to finish it tonight, so I thought I'd just share this beautiful image. It's Gustave Moreau'sA Esfinge Vencedora. (Click on the image to enlarge it.) The sphinx is rather winsome--completely out of keeping with the myth. I like that, and I love the surprise of white skin against the gloomy background.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

The deer have begun to gather into their wintertime herds. It amazes me to see them collectively decide to do this every fall. One day they’re grazing alone or in small groups of three or four, and then the next day a threshold is crossed....(more)